A Woodbury woman pleaded guilty Friday to attempted first-degree murder as she admitted to ambushing a Minneapolis police forensic scientist, shooting her multiple times outside a child-care center in a scheme to gain her boyfriend full custody of his son.
Colleen Purificacion Larson, 25, waived her right to a jury trial in Hennepin County District Court just four days after her ex-boyfriend, Timothy Amacher, 41, was sentenced to 18 years for helping plot and cover up the shooting of Nicole Lenway, the mother of his son. They had been fighting a bitter, yearslong child custody battle, which ultimately led to bloodshed on April 20.
"I ran up behind her and pulled the gun," Larson said in court Friday. Asked how many times she fired at Lenway, Larson said that she "wasn't counting." After Lenway dropped to the ground, she said, "I continued to fire."
Larson's attorneys, James Gempeler and Daniel Adkins, are asking District Judge Shereen Askalani for probation with her plea. Prosecutors did not say what sentence or conditions they are seeking for Larson. Askalani will announce the sentence March 27.
Askalani asked Larson to explain what led up to the shooting, how Amacher influenced her to carry out the attack, and how she decided to involve herself in the conspiracy to kill Lenway.
Larson said that Amacher told her when she could expect to find Lenway outside Family Wise, the supervised visitation facility in Minneapolis for families in shared custody. She said she knew that Lenway brought her son there every other Wednesday for Amacher's supervised visits, and that Lenway arrived 15 minutes before picking her son up.
She said she intended to kill Lenway to benefit Amacher. "He was upset with court and how custody wasn't going very well," Larson said.
"He just wanted her to be gone so that he could be with his son," Larson said.